Coral Reprimanded For Appealing To Children

There have been many changes of late in the world of online gambling and one has been the Gambling Commission and Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) stronger stance on advertising appealing to under 18’s.

Popular slot titles like Fluffy Favourites, Jack and The Beanstalk and many others have been removed from the front pages of many an online casino. These have been relegated to the after-login pages, pages only viewable after a player has registered and agreed that they are over the age of 18.

A letter was sent to all online operators in October 2017 [read it here] in which it stated that they should remove immediately any ads on their own websites, or third party media that are:

likely to appeal particularly to people aged 17 or younger (‘under 18’); and,

generally available to view (‘freely accessible’).

One complaint was recently made about the main Coral website and how it looked on 20th February 2018.

Coral Compliant To The ASA

The one complainant felt the ads for Rainbow Riches, Fishin’ Frenzy and Lucky Wizard on the Coral website on that date held particular appeal to children.

Coral responded by defending how each of the images for the three products looked on their site, also by saying that the style was consistent with that available for other products and across the industry for slots.

The ASA reiterated that gambling ads should not appeal more strongly to under 18s then they did to over 18s but felt that all three of the games in question did just that.

16.1
Marketing communications for gambling must be socially responsible, with particular regard to the need to protect children, young persons and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited.

16.3
Marketing communications must not:

16.3.12
be likely to be of particular appeal to children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture